Fitting the pieces together

Having learned more about the different learning theories hasn’t really changed my view on how I learn.  Rather I have become more attuned to how I learn and how I can capitalize on this new understanding.  I can now work with intent and purpose to seek out connections when learning new material.  Before I would not be so purposeful about the process and allow it happen somewhat involuntarily, being surprised when seemingly disparate knowledge related.  But now I feel confident to look for those cues to activate prior knowledge and to seek out connections across knowledge areas and purposefully construct new meanings.

I think I tend toward constructivism and the other context related and dependent theories (social learning and connectivism) because they are fluid.  Behaviorism and cognitive theory are too rigid for me.  These allow little room for innovation as they define knowledge as the ability to recall a desired response to a given stimulus.  The context related theories by contrast allow that knowledge is not concrete and can have several meanings simultaneously.  For me this condition enriches the pursuit of knowledge, as it becomes a thing to be considered in a more spatial sense instead of the linear modality of behaviorism and cognitive theory.

I also related to adult learning theory in that I have little patience for too much process.  I prefer to know the end to which I am working and then to construct meaning out of my current context with that specific goal in mind.  Although I must be careful that knowledge of the ends do not adversely affect the means, or the context.  Every effort must still be made to attempt as authentic an experience as possible.

The role that technology plays for me in my learning is still largely to search for information.  I use search engines as a general start and then I move on to scholarly databases such as JSTOR and ERIC.  Using these sites allows me to make very broad searches and then to narrow and modify my search.  Doing so cues me into the ways in which the databases organize their knowledge and how I organize my own knowledge.

I still do not know to what extent I will use most web based applications but I think I will now be much more primed to look for, and even seek out, opportunities to integrate a broader range of these applications into my planning and design.

Reflection on my Learning Networks

It was very interesting to map out my learning networks (see map below).  I began to think mostly about the sub-groups and the sub-sub-groups, etc.  I can pinpoint two elements that have changed the way I learn which are included in the “friends” category and the “Colleagues” category.  I have a good friend who is a tenured professor at a college in the Pacific Northwest.  We have known eachother  from high school.   Out of high school he went to the Ivy League and I went to the Marines.  Our intellectual paths were quite different but throughout the years  as he pursued and earned his PhD I learned about learning from him, his wife (currently working on her dissertation), and the many friends of his that I would listen to at cocktail parties.  The level of introspection and investigation and the lack of truly concrete opinions without deeply considered evidence has been the greatest influence on my learning.  This was further developed in college and graduate school by some very good professors and some nobly combative colleagues.

What makes this truly valuable though is that I continue to apply these lessons of digging deeper and deeper for the “truth” of a thing and when I am listening to or reading a source I consider what they/it is saying and work it into my knowledge.  If it is unfamiliar I will generally go to technological resources, including books, to learn more and expand my understanding and perhaps change it. 

Notice I included books in technology.  This betrays my bias toward the humanities but also a bias against our greater dependence on technology.  I could, by some, be considered somewhat of a Luddite.  I am dismayed by our growing dependence on technology.  It is certainly a wonderful advancement to have so much information at our fingertips but it is also dangerous to the goal of doing the hard work to really cement the new knowledge in our brains.  For a larger discussion on the effects of the internet on how we learn I suggest this article from the Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/

Nonetheless, my first stop for answering questions or discovering new knowledge is generally a database.  While electronic it is little more than a really cool card catalogue.  Indeed the act of navigating a database search engine itself is an exercise in the construction of knowledge and meaning.  Think for a moment on the ways in which the keywords are mapped and how they lead one to a specific article that may not in fact have much, or any, relevance to the original search.  I have often found myself sidetracked into another line of questioning by just such a search result.

I think my personal learning networks support the tenets of connectivism because I rely on congress to construct meaning.  I do very little without considering what others have said on the subject and their contexts.  But I am only able to do this because of the experiences I have had due to my exposure and training through the right friends and professors.  These lessons are the foundation of how I construct new meaning after being exposed to information through any number of media.  Perhaps they should be in the middle and all else branching from them.

My Learning Networks

Two resources I think will be useful

So this week we had to identify two resources that we think will be useful to us as we work to become more effective instructors.  The two I picked up are ERIC and Instructional Science.  ERIC is a free resource maintained by DoEd and Instructional Science is maintained on EBSCO HOST Database: Education Research Complete — Publications and you would need an affiliation with Walden University to get to this one but I am sure the journal is widely available through other databases.  The publisher is Springer Link.

I have always been a fan of ERIC.  While not dedicated to Instructional Design specifically it is dedicated to education and provides access to a huge cross disciplinary database.  It maintains access to records from thousands of print resources and has friendly search capabilities.  I love that I can make a simple search and then search within those results to refine.    For example I did a simple search for “information processing” and then searched within the results for instructional design.  I was rewarded with a top search result of “Using a Diagnosis-Based Approach to Individualize Instructional Explanations in Computer-Mediated Communication” which is an article from the March 2010 Educational Psychology Review.  ERIC also accepts direct submissions of research and conference presentations from educational and governmental organizations as well as individuals.  Not all of the articles are free  on the site but it does have a link to WorldCat to find the source in a nearby library or electronic database.

Instructional Science is a journal which features “Scholarly articles on learning and related subjects providing significant contributions to the science of instruction, the instructional process and the learning to which it gives rise.”  Such a journal has great value to instructional design minded people who are looking to better understand not only the process of the design but how it relates to the actual learning goals and how to better predicts the results.  Knowing the outcome of experience informs later experience.  Through a review of article titles this journal seems to also emphasize the importance of reflective practice; a vital component of designing increasingly better instruction.  Using such a source can mitigate the bitterness of authentic experience and help new instructors to become better faster.  Indeed I wish I had been introduced to this journal during my student teaching.  I believe I would  have had a smoother experience when it came to constructing lessons.

A look at three other blogs

For a class assignment I looked at three other blogs related to instructional design;  IDEAS, internettime, and Word Press’s Blogs about: Instructional Design.

IDEAS looks like it will be a useful site.  It seems to be a blog by a professional instructional designer.  The front page, today, has an outline for instruction about pharmacology.  His references are well organized, as are his categories in the right margin.  Such blog options as ‘categories’ will be very useful as I venture into the field of instructional design as these tell me what other designers find relevant to their discipline and may clue me in to the scope and direction of the field.  It also helps to have such organization as I begin to learn what is actually relevant to my ideas of the field and begin to see where the teaching and design disciplines overlap.

My first impression of internettime was good.  The main page about design discusses the theory of design itself; which is different from the learning theory or pedagogical theory.  Having a resource that breaks out the design from the instruction and pedagogy will be valuable in focusing on the finer points of designing instruction.  However, there were few useful links to other pages.  Some led to accounts of walks in the park, and many of the archived posts were dead links.

Blogs about: Instructional design was excellent.  It is only a listing of blog posts on WordPress about instructional design as designated by tags, but it collects those posts in one spot from across WordPress’s domain.  Having a collection of relevant posts can be time saving as it will allow the reader to quickly scan posts that are already tagged as instructional design while not having to self filter.  Also, each entry shows other tags for that entry.  This will be helpful as we get a sense of the nature of the field of instructional design.  There is also an index of related links in the upper right corner with the frequency of other tags represented by the names of those tags being in relatively sized letters a la wordle.

Although there are useful aspects to each site I think I will use the WordPress index the most.  I think it will give me more of a “real-time” and synthetic look into the field of Instructional Design.

Please allow me to introduce myself

I have just graduated from Emory University’s Master of Arts in Teaching program and am excited to begin my new career. This step is hardly an end, though, and I continue to work to hone my craft.  Toward this goal I have begun a graduate program in instructional design with Walden University.  This blog has been started as a component of the program but I would very much like to connect with the larger world of education and instructional design to work to better understand the confluence of theory and application.

I look forward to many interesting times, I hope I am able to offer you some insight as well.

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